The Coventry Carol has been a favorite of mine for many years – when done “right”, it will send chills up your spine. The author of this work is unknown; the oldest known text was written down by Robert Croo in 1534, and the oldest known printing of the melody dates from 1591. The carol is traditionally sung a cappella.

Today, I’m going to share a few of my favorite versions of this hauntingly beautiful melody with you, starting with The Robert Shaw Chorale:
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.I like this performance from the Collegium Vocale Gent, a small ensemble group performing in a cathedral in Belgium. This version is an excellent demonstration of what “old school” acoustics can do to enhance and amplify just a few pure voices.

If you’ve ever had an opportunity to sing in one of these old cathedrals, you know what I’m talking about – there is nothing like standing in the “sweet spot” of soaring masonry arches and singing a song that was written in the days when architecture WAS the microphone (most of these early tunes were written for all-male choruses, with a boys’ choir taking the higher voicings):
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And now, the story behind the origin of the song:

The Coventry Carol is a Christmas carol dating from the 16th Century. The carol was performed in Coventry as part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The play depicts the Christmas story from chapter two in the Gospel of Matthew. The carol refers to the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod orders all male infants under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed. The lyrics of this haunting carol represent a mother’s lament for her doomed child. It is the only carol that has survived from this play.

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Nuts and Bolts:

“Luddites and anti-intellectuals do not master the differential equations of thermodynamics or the biochemical cures of illness. They stay in thatched huts and die young.” – Edward O. Wilson

Fathom the hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured…but not everyone must prove they are a citizen.

“When men have suffered their imaginations to be long affected with any idea, it so wholly engrosses them as to shut out by degrees almost every other, and to break down every partition of the mind which would confine it.” – Edmund Burke.

“Michael Moore simultaneously represents everything I detest in a human being and everything I feel obligated to defend in an American. Quite simply, it is that stupid moron’s right to be that utterly and completely wrong.” – Dennis Miller

When Lawbreakers are in charge of the Law, we no longer have a Republic.

“It will be a great day when taxpayers keep the money they earned and DC has to hold a bake sale to to raise the debt limit.” – David Burge (aka “iowahawk”)

Funny. They complain about racism while demanding it.

“The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” – Saul Bellow

“Pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are anything other than the little shriveled, meagre, hopping (though loud and troublesome) insects of the hour” – Edmund Burke

“It is not ours to restore the power of the Constitution. It is ours to show them the wrath of America without the protections the Constitution offers them. Let them restore it to find refuge from us.” – TL Davis